Research & Development – Landcatch The DNA-Team
PROVES THAT CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY CAN BE APPLIED TO THE AQUACULTURE INDUSTRY
LANDCATCH’S PEDIGREE BREEDING PROGRAMME TIM SIDDONS The
Landcatch broodstock comprises 200 salmon families
30 F
or such a young industry, aquacul- ture has come a long way. Perhaps
one of its greatest triumphs to date has been in breed- ing, and it is a Scottish company that pioneered and leads the way in the development and adoption of cutting-edge genetic technology in salmon breeding. Founded in 1980 by Sir William Lithgow, Land-
catch Ltd was primarily a production company, sup- plying smolts and eggs from the broodstock – which comprises 200 families – managed at its land-based seawater site in Ormsary, Argyll. It also has four freshwater tank sites in Scotland.
‘Historically we have been
a production company,’ explain Neil Manchester, MD of Landcatch, ‘princi- pally smolts – in total we produce just under five million smolts a year; we
start them off at Ormsary, where we finish off around half, the other half across our other sites.
‘So the principle part of the business is smolt pro- duction; mostly within the UK – around 15 per cent of the Scottish market. We also supply smolts to other countries, including France, Spain, Ireland, Norway and Russia.’
The company is also
involved in egg production. They have the capacity to produce around 50 million
eggs and during the ‘90s, Manchester explains, they were producing that many, mainly to the Chilean market. ‘However, when ISA hit Chile in 2007/8 they closed the borders and left us with quite a big problem,’ he explains. ‘We weren’t able to redevelop the domestic market, so we’ve cut production to around 15 million eggs. A third of those are used for our own internal production and the rest are being sold, mainly
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